Choices, Decisions and Lifestyles Roundtable

Background

While achieving energy security and environment goals will require broad shifts in technology choices, it will also require a revolution in lifestyles, and the commitment and capacity of individuals and organisations to reshape their energy-service demands (see Concept Note).

To date, policy attention has focused on overcoming technical, economic and information barriers to improving energy efficiency – including measures to promote and regulate energy-efficient technologies, inform consumers and incentivise purchase and uptake. While techno-economic policy interventions have led to energy efficiency improvements, an enormous amount of cost-effective energy potential still exists.

To tap this potential, the ‘Choices, Decisions and Lifestyles’ Roundtable, hosted by the IEA in Paris 13 March 2013, took a step back from classic techno-economic policy approaches to identify innovative levers informed by social science to scale up energy efficiency. These levers recognise that there are more than 7 billion people on this earth from diverse cultures, geographies, socio-economic groups and generations and with different norms, values, attitudes, habits and infrastructures. These differences inform choices, decisions and lifestyles that, in turn, impact energy consumption.

During the Roundtable, representatives from more than 15 countries shared experience with proven-practice energy efficiency policy interventions informed by social-science research. The Roundtable did not seek to identify measures that simply ‘change behaviour’ – this goal is too limiting. Policies presented at the Roundtable went beyond promotion of discrete efficient behaviours and products (i.e. turning off lights or purchasing LEDs) to enable transformative change (more efficient eating, playing, moving, working, bathing, sleeping, etc.).

Participants were be asked to make short presentations providing key insights from their work on: